


The Recurrence of Memory

by HolmesianDeduction



Series: 25 Days of Holiday Fic 2k12 [21]
Category: Smiley's People - John Le Carré, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - All Media Types, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - John Le Carré
Genre: 25 Days of Fic, Character Study, Chestnuts, Gen, Karla - Freeform, Major Spoilers, Memories, Scents & Smells, Spoilers, Tatiana - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-25
Updated: 2012-12-25
Packaged: 2017-11-22 08:46:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/607975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HolmesianDeduction/pseuds/HolmesianDeduction
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[25 Days of Holiday Fic: Day 24 - Chestnuts]</p>
<p>George's memories are linked together like bits of chain fencing, but sometimes they flow into one another.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Recurrence of Memory

             For George Smiley, the smell of roasting chestnuts was inexorably tied to the memory of Berne in winter.  The smoky, burnt-wood aroma took him back to snowy streets and the dull, throbbing anxiety of the hunt.  And just as chestnuts were tied to Berne, so the memory of Berne conjured the spectres of Karla and his mad daughter - spectres which had mercifully stayed away from his memories of Berlin to hover over Switzerland.

             Neither of these associations were ones with which Ann Smiley was familiar, and so, as the smell drifted on the air as he mounted the steps to the front door, he was unable to blame her for the wave of bitter memory that crashed over him, halting him momentarily at the top of the stairs, fingers clenching around the handle of his battered old attaché case before his other hand resolutely turned the key in the door.  Ann, as always, heard him enter, and a second glass of port was sitting on the table before he made it to their small kitchen.  She was not, as it turned out, roasting chestnuts herself, but keeping purchased ones warm.  Smiley deliberately neglected to ask where she had acquired them.

             Late in the evening, the smell still permeated the front of the house, and the drawing room being no exception, the Smileys sat immersed in the residual scent of roasting chestnuts, which overpowered even the wood burning in the fireplace.  Perhaps it was only the port, but for Smiley, the crackling of the fire had become the tight snap of Tatiana’s laughter.  The rustling of the cat Peter had brought him one day “to help keep company” as it brushed up against the curtains was suddenly the icy Swiss wind in Toby’s coat as he padded along somewhere behind him.  The dark shadow of a hunched old schoolteacher on his way home shifted into the spectre of the man Smiley sometimes feared stared back at him in the mirror - who had crossed a bridge in Berlin and, Smiley suspected, traded George Smiley’s soul for the return of his own.


End file.
